Drawing Lifelong False Conclusions
I was singled out. Excluded. The one kid in class who didn’t get his song played at the school Christmas party. Each one of us 9 or 8 year-olds could choose one song to be played at fun-day, the final day before the Christmas holiday.
My choice was easy. The Boomtown Rats were my favourite band at the time. It was far from common for a kid at that early stage of life to be into a post-punk/new-wave rock outfit like the Rats, but I loved them. The year before, their song ‘Rat Trap’ came out and I went nuts watching them perform it on Top of The Pops. My taste in music was changed forever.
Then, during the summer of 1979, they released what would be their most well-known song: ‘I Don’t Like Mondays.’ When their album came out, which had that song on it, I asked (or begged) my mother to buy it for me on cassette tape. On tape, so I could take it to school so it could be my choice of song at that class party day.
Each of my classmates did the same with their favourite songs. Most were a mix of the kid-friendly pickings from the pop-disco trend of the late 70s. Our teacher played each of them in turn. Until it was my turn.
“No, Wyn. I won’t play that,” said the teacher, adamant in her stance. I’m sure I would have looked confused, maybe astonished. Definitely upset.
“You’re playing everyone else’s, why not mine?” I might have asked. The truth is, I can’t remember what I said next. Nor if the teacher tried to explain. I was too hurt to listen.
The teacher went on to play a kid called Andrew’s song for the second time. Evidence he was her favourite.
I took it as a personal slight. I took meaning from it. Andrew was OK. Lovable. Worthy. I took it that I was not.
I was wrong. The ‘me’: wrong. I mean, what else could I make of it?
I. Am. Wrong.
I’d probably thought that about myself before then, for reasons I can’t recall. And I know I thought it about myself countless times since. So many times, in fact, that I took it as the gospel truth. So it became my identity. Something to play down to.
It was only during 2012 when I began to learn that a thought, regardless of how long or how often it might enter someone’s mind, is nothing other than a thought. Yes, regardless of how many times it might have been thought. Regardless of how long ago it was first thought. Regardless even of how big the feeling is that comes with it. That last one’s a slippery, somewhat hard-to-believe fact about thought.
I felt ‘wrong’ with such depth; how could it be anything other than a fact?
Here’s what unravelled this all for me.
A few years after that school class Christmas party, when my choice of song was excluded, I learnt what the song was written about. It’s about a teenager shooting at a school, with tragic consequences.
I hadn’t put two and two together yet. Funny how it can often take a heck of a long time for a penny to drop… In fact, it was only a few months ago that I put those two things together: what the song was about and my teacher’s decision to not play it. Of course she wouldn’t play it! It made absolute sense. It had NOTHING to do with ME. I can’t even be blamed for choosing such an inappropriate song to be played to a class of 8 and 9 year olds. I had no idea what it was about then!
I’m left to wonder as I write this what other spurious comments about me I’ve heard and taken as meaningful since I was born. It’s not a train of thought I want to get into, but it’s fun to wonder… And how many comments about how whole and lovable I must have heard in those same years. That I ignored.
I’m glad I can now see through so much of the BS my head makes up. My internal conspiracy theory machine: contriving to link unconnected words and events into a fake identity.
With love and thanks,
Wyn
